Survey Shows Most Americans Feel Awkward Around The Disabled

September 11, 1991|By ALAN CULLISON; Courant Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — C Most Americans feel awkward or embarrassed -- and even downright scared -- around disabled people and would like to see at least some modest government spending to help them join the mainstream of American life, a survey released Tuesday says.

The Louis Harris & Associates telephone survey of 1,257 people concludes that most Americans feel more disabled people should have the opportunity to work because it would give the country an economic boost.

And while 90 percent of the respondents said they admired people with disabilities for the barriers they have overcome, the study found that the respondents generally felt guilt, pity and awkwardness around the disabled.

Almost half the respondents said they experienced fear because what happened to a person with a disability might happen to them.

Avocates for the disabled say those feelings -- fear, pity and discomfort -- are disappointing because they betray the feeling that disabled people are somehow alien and bizarre. Programs to help them should be pragmatic, rather than guilt-driven, they say.

"We try to get people to look at government programs as more civil rights things, rather than handouts," said Stan Kosloski, assistant director of the Connecticut Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities.

"On the other hand, you have Jerry Lewis raising money on a pity-type telethon. You don't want to appeal to peoples' pity, but what the telethon raised is greater than ever." Those responding to the survey discriminated among the types of disabled people that made them feel most awkward: The mentally ill and the facially disfigured fared the worst.

Only 19 percent of the respondents said they could feel comfortable around a mentally ill person. Twenty-eight percent said they would rather not be around someone who is facially disfigured.

About a third of the respondents said they felt "not too comfortable" or "not comfortable at all" around people who were senile and mentally retarded.

People who are deaf, blind, or use a wheelchair engender much less discomfort, the survey said.

The survey was sponsored by the National Organization on Disability, which lobbies for integrating the country's 43 million disabled people into the social and economic mainstream. Harris declined to give the survey's margin of error.

One piece of legislation the group backed was the 1990 Disabilities Act, which extended civil rights protections to disabled people that were previously only extended to women and members of racial, ethnic and religious minority groups. Among other provisions, it required making public places such as stores, restaurants, theaters and hotels accessible to people with disabilities.

Hardly any respondents to the survey had heard of the act, but they were overwhelmingly supportive of its key provisions when told of them.

Advocates said the survey points to encouraging trends in opinion: better-educated people tended to react more naturally to disabled people, as well as those who are acquainted with the increasing numbers of people with disabilities in the workplace.

"Certainly over my lifetime, I have seen a great deal of improvement. When I grew up there was mostly disgust, never admiration," said Phyllis Zlotnick, who is affected by muscular dystrophy and is an advocate in Connecticut for people with disabilities.

But Zlotnick said she would also like to see feelings of admiration dissipate in coming years, as people with disabilities are allowed to filter into schools and workplaces.

"Someday, I'd like people with disabilities to be so commonplace, to be so natural, that people do not notice it. Then people will have no feelings when they meet them -- pity, admiration or guilt. As we all integrate, things will get better."